Taplist

Category: Beer Bars

It seems you can’t blink in this town without a new brewery/restaurant/taproom opening. Most of it goes unnoticed because we just can’t keep up with it all. Proper Pint was different. My wife and I drive by the location everyday and have been watching the progress since before we even knew it was going to be a taproom. When the signs went up for Proper Pint we were excited to have another beer bar in the area that would be walking distance from our house (Only 7 blocks).

Last Saturday, we drove by the location (52nd and Woodstock) and saw people inside. They looked open. We already had plans for that day, but we decided we would swing by on Sunday. While I was searching the internet for a website with online tap listings and hours of operation, I didn’t find it, but I did run across this great article from New School Beer which gives a little bit of history of the owner Sean Hiatt, formerly of the Civic Taproom. The article also has some great pictures of the interior, which I neglected to take because I was more interested in the beer.

So we stopped in on Sunday, and as fate would have it, ended up sitting next to Sean at the bar. He looked nervous, but in that excited energy kind of way. Turns out they had opened the day before, when we saw people inside, so this was only their second day open. We chit chatted with Sean and with Gary behind the bar while we ordered a couple beers and enjoyed the space. Sean said they hoped to have a “grand opening” celebration in a couple weeks. He said the target was Saturday August 5th, but that sounded up in the air, so don’t quote me on that.

One of the things I discovered in the article, and then spoke to Sean about on Sunday, was that he built the bar. Literally. He is an accomplished wood worker and he built the tables, stools, shelves, bar, barback etc. Anything made of wood in that bar, he made it. He said it took him about four months to make all the chairs and tables. Talk about a labor of love!

I would certainly call last weekend a “soft opening”, there are still some kinks to work out, like tap handles that don’t fit quite right and figuring out how to best utilize the flow control taps, but I feel confident they will get those worked out quickly.

Another thing that I observed, which was both a kink to work out and a great example of customer service, was when a patron ordered the de Garde Bu Weisse, and then she came back a few minutes later and told Gary that she thought this was the Zitrus Weizen and not the Weisse. The two taps were side by side. Gary poured a small amount from both taps, looked, smelled and tasted them (which is allowed now by OLCC regulations) and told the customer she was absolutely right. Poured her a new glass and then went to the back to see what had gone wrong and discovered the two draft lines were swapped. The way he handled that situation was very well done. Obviously with being newly opened, things like this will happen, but to handle them with class and grace is a tribute to the team there at Proper Pint.

When we were there they had a good mix of beers on tap, which has probably changed by now, including the requisite IPAs and Double IPAs, but also a handful of lighter beers like Kolsch and Weizen and Farmhouse beers. They also have a couple of ciders on tap and two nitro taps. One was Left Hand Milk Stout on Nitro, the other was a Nitro IPA from Loowit. While I loved the hop profile of the IPA, the Nitro made it seem flat and overly sweet. It was missing that bite from the carbonation.

If you live in SE Portland (or maybe if you don’t) I’d highly recommend you swing by. I know my wife and I will be back fairly often.

Proper Pint Taproom is located at the Intersection of 52nd Street and Woodstock Blvd. They are open from noon to about midnight, 7 days a week (official hours not yet posted). For more information check out their Facebook Page.

Portland is a beer town. Some would argue the beer town. Despite having the most breweries within it’s city limits of any city in the world (and always adding more), a bunch of thirsty beer geeks demand great beer from all over the world. And they get it. There’s a number of top notch bottleshops in town that have a great selection. The one I’m going to recommend to you right now is Belmont Station. It’s now on Stark Street, but it used to be on Belmont Street right next to Don Younger’s Horse Brass Pub, which is another local institution with a story for another time.

If you haven’t been to Belmont Station I highly recommend it. They have an extremely well curated selection and friendly staff that can help you find what you’re looking for. The bar side has 8-10 rotating taps of draft beer, but you can also grab a bottle from the bottleshop side, take it to the bar and have them open it for you to drink on site.

A couple nights ago a group of friends and I had a party there, essentially a bottle share. We all grabbed a couple bottles to share and pass around the table. With 10 people picking things you can imagine the variety of things that people brought to the table. In fact, it impressed me so much that’s why I wanted to share it. I didn’t take any tasting notes so I just wanted to list some of the different breweries that were represented, from all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas. All of these beers were available for sale at Belmont Station, no one brought any outside stuff.

There were plenty of local favorites represented, lest we lose our Beervana cred. Deschutes, Full Sail, Heathen (Vancouver), Ale Apocathary and Upright were represented from Oregon (and close-in Washington).

From further out in Washington, we had Sound Brewers from Poulsbo (across the Puget Sound from Seattle) and Wingman Brewery from Tacoma.

California, not surprisingly, had a good showing with Heretic from Fairfield (North of San Francisco), Lagunitas from Petaluma, Smog City Brewing from Torrance (Los Angeles area), Three Weavers from Inglewood, North Coast Brewing from Fort Bragg, Stone Brewing from Escondido, and El Segundo Brewing from El Segundo.

Now things start getting a little further afield. From Colorado we have Avery Brewing from Boulder and Trinity Brewing from Colorado Springs. From the Midwest we have Off Color Brewing from Chicago and from Alaska we have Anchorage Brewing.

For my East coast friends, we managed to get two breweries from Brooklyn, Other Half and Evil Twin (which almost sound like they could be two breweries separated at birth?) and from Delaware, we have Dogfish Head.

Last but not least, a couple of beers that came to us from across the pond! We have To Øl Brewing from Denmark and Brouwerij Van Steenberge from Belgium.

So there you have it. A rather impressive list, and thankfully everyone had arranged for a safe ride home after swapping all those bottles. If you want to take a trip around the world of beer, it doesn’t hurt to start at your local bottle shop. Once again, if you haven’t checked out Belmont Station, you should.

On Friday evening, my wife took me on a surprise date night. She had driven past the place and with our running Yeti jokes knew it was a place she needed to take me. So, imagine you’re leaving town and getting out into a more rural area and you come across a country store with a growler fill station. You’d expect the place to have 4 or 5 taps of a few major local brands right?

Try 42!

Welcome to Bigfoot Growlers. The L shaped bar takes up an entire corner of Nature’s Country Store in Damascus Oregon. Along with 33 beers, the taplist also includes 1 wine, 7 ciders and Crater Lake Root Beer. The staff behind the bar is great at recommendations and pouring samples. We were there when one of the kegs blew, and we got a sample of the new beer that replaced it just because we were sitting there. Turns out it was Half-Hitch IPA from Crux, which was incredible. They also aren’t afraid to experiment with things. My wife couldn’t decide between the Chocolate Shake Nitro stout or the Black Cherry Imperial Stout, and so they mixed it 50/50 which turned out to be pretty incredible.

Although it will likely change very often, the current taplist (link) includes: